JOHN DAY, Ore. – Patrick Shipsey is a tall, thin doctor who loves rural living. A native of the small southern Oregon city of Klamath Falls, he moved to John Day six years ago because he says he was drawn to the surrounding countryside. Although his environmentalism at times made him a pariah in this […]
Cows, ballot measure gunned down in Oregon
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Dear friends
The aftermath With this issue we get our chance to punditify, prognosticate and otherwise ponder what Western voters meant to do when they each took five or 10 minutes to punch out their preferences: Urban voters may pull down levers in booths with curtains; rural voters tend to stand at open lecterns and punch out […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
If politics is a baseball game, I don’t even own a bat
After each election I become the fearful character in a Gary Larson cartoon, peering through window slats to discover that neighboring houses are occupied by large canines, drooling spittle and looking hungrily in my direction. After 12 elections, I ought to have more stomach for the results, but each biennium comes as fresh horror. The […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Heard around the West
Visitors to one of north Idaho’s most popular spots – the 200-acre “Samowen” campground on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille – have often been stumped by its Polynesian-sounding name. ” ‘Can you tell me about Samoan campground?’ they ask,” Idaho Panhandle National Forest spokeswoman Judy York told the Spokane Spokesman-Review. Now the area has […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Logging, floods push metals downstream
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Heavy metals don’t recognize state boundaries. That’s why some people in Spokane, Wash., 30 miles downstream from Lake Coeur d’Alene, are worried. “The metals are coming this way, and we hope to slow them down so they don’t also poison the Columbia River Basin,” […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
A tribe that takes the high road
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. It was the discovery of silver and gold in the hills above Lake Coeur d’Alene that finally pushed the Coeur d’Alene Indians onto a reservation in the 1870s. Now it is the tribe – small, at just 1,450 members – that is pushing back […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Sacred lands shouldn’t smell
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1994, the Coeur d’Alene tribe spent $200,000 to remove 1,000 tons of lead-contaminated soil from a riverside area long used by the tribe. But when the tribe wanted to construct a levee on private land to protect the site from floods, the other […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
River cleanup is slow, expensive and maybe hopeless
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. CANYON CREEK, Idaho – Thick mud gushes beneath Marti Calabretta’s high rubber boots as she walks from her office, a much-used house trailer, to the dirty pickup truck. The raw landscape looks like a construction site before the pouring of a foundation, but Calabretta […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Piling a new economy on the old
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. For a century, mining and logging drove the economy of Coeur d’Alene. When those industries went bust in the early 1980s, a small group of city leaders began searching for a new engine. Among them was Duane Hagadone, a native son who owns most […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Pollution in paradise
A robust service economy can’t bury mining’s toxic waste
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
The West in Motion: Navigating the Shifting Currents of Change
This year’s annual meeting of the Council of State Governments-WEST will focus on what makes the West go, from the information super highway to cement byways. Kicking off the meeting Nov. 16 to 19 in Santa Fe, N.M., is keynote speaker Neil Goldschmidt, former governor of Oregon and chair of the council’s task force on […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Conflict or Collaboration
The Intermountain Forest Industry Association will talk about “Conflict or Collaboration” Dec. 12 at its annual meeting in Idaho. Speakers include Idaho Rep. Mike Crapo; former Gov. Cecil Andrus; Tom Tuchman, President Clinton’s representative for forestry issues in the Northwest, and High Country News publisher Ed Marston. For more information, contact Intermountain Forest Industry Association, […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Montana’s Wild Landscapes: New Perspectives and Traditional Values
Public-land controversies will spice up the Montana Wilderness Association three-day convention, Montana’s Wild Landscapes: New Perspectives and Traditional Values, in Bozeman Dec. 6-7. Topics include the debate over motorized trail use, planning for Glacier National Park and the effects of Montana’s growing tourism industry on public lands. Retiring Rep. Pat Williams, D, will deliver the […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Urgent news from the front
The battle over whether to industrialize Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front has heated up, thanks to a proposal from the Forest Service to allow new oil and gas leases in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The preferred alternative in a draft environmental impact statement would make 52 percent of the 1.8 million-acre forest available for […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Help find Pyramid Lake
Locals around Pyramid Lake, Nev., have wondered for years how explorer John C. Fremont first discovered this body of water in 1842. To test some hypotheses and to publicize the area, the nonprofit Friends of Pyramid Lake is sponsoring a two-part essay contest: Writers are invited to submit essays by Dec. 31 describing how Fremont […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Californians stay home
After five years of stirring up the real estate pot, Californians have stopped moving east, and newcomers are moving to the coast again. That’s the conclusion of private researchers who studied surrendered drivers’ licenses in the Golden State. It marks the first time in six years that more people are moving into the state than […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Eyes of fire
It was March 7, 1996, on the fourth day of a 10-day lion hunt in the Peloncillo Mountains of southern Arizona, when rancher Warner Glenn and his hunting dogs happened on a big cat they’d never seen before in America. It was a jaguar, and Glenn, in this quickly produced little booklet, tells us he […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
What’s not on the label
The “secret” ingredients in a few widely used pesticides won’t be secret anymore, thanks to a small nonprofit group in Eugene, Ore. The Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides won a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Oct. 16 against both the Environmental Protection Agency and the pesticide industry, which had claimed that “inert” ingredients are […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
One win, one loss
Fall brought both good and bad news for the Telluride Ski and Golf Company. The western Colorado company got another green light Oct. 22, to double its skiing terrain, when the Forest Service rejected an appeal by environmentalists. But in a separate agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency, Telski will pay a $1.1 million fine […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Utah tells Babbitt to back off
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has been sued by the state of Utah for his decision to reopen the process of wilderness designation (HCN, 9/2/96). Filed Oct. 14 in federal court, the suit challenges the legality of Babbitt’s “re-inventory” of Bureau of Land Management lands in Utah without public involvement. Babbitt announced on July 24 that […]